If there were medals given out for Olympic coverage, CTV would finish off the podium. [picapp align=”right” wrap=”true” link=”term=Alexandre+Bilodeau&iid=7938787″ src=”a/6/a/f/Freestyle_Skiing_2635.jpg?adImageId=10391135&imageId=7938787″ width=”380″ height=”556″ /]

The network’s coverage has been horrendous so far, leading to some of us to choose to watch the Games on NBC instead.

It’s not like there was one or two things. In fact, I was looking forward to CTV being the Canadian broadcaster. They own TSN, Sportsnet, RDS, AChannel and OLN. If they couldn’t showcase a certain event on one station, they had plenty of others to choose from.

But the whole thing has been a disappointment.

To start, the announcers are pretty brutal. Only the anchors from TSN show any ability to do a good job at broadcasting the Games. The rest are pretty bad. For example, they seem to want to jinx the Canadian athletes, especially before the first gold medal, with statements such as “He has all the pressure of Canada on his shoulders as he prepares to jump.”

It got to the point that my wife is watching figure skating on NBC because they’re doing a much better job.

In the men’s hockey game featuring Canada against Norway, the score was close in the first (a 0-0 tie, before Canada opened up and won 10-0). Johnathan Toews got nailed with a bodycheck by one of the Norwegians. I mean, just plastered. Of course, there was never a mention of it again, not even a replay. But when a Canadian player laid out a Norwegian with a solid hit, it was replayed numerous times.

I understand they need to cater to Canadian fans, and will be biased toward Canada. But this is a little much. Give credit where credit is due, no matter what team it comes from.

Finally, there’s the online portion. At a house the other day with no cable, we wanted to watch the men’s moguls online (the one where Alexandre Bilodeau won Canada’s first ever gold medal on Canadian soil). First, we had trouble getting the server to stop freezing. Then, we had to watch it with no sound because it wasn’t working. Finally, when it was up and running, CTV would run ads about very 45 seconds…

Even in the middle of a run. And since commercials run about 30 seconds, and each run takes about 30 seconds, there were times when we missed runs completely because of the ads. There were times we had no idea who was racing, or where they finished, or what was happening.

2 responses to “CTV Olympic coverage doesn’t deserve a medal”

I totally agree.What really gets me is that I Believe stuff…i mean, how long have we been hearing that now…over a year? And if i hear that song again i think i’m really gonna puke!! Have they ever heard of pop music?…is there anyway to start a petition to stop or at least cut back on that bloody stupid song?